Briefcase by AppSumo (Review): The Ultimate Business Toolkit for Entrepreneurs — Updated!

[Editor’s Note: This AppSumo Briefcase review was first published in November 2017. Since then, AppSumo has added and removed a few products from the curated selection of products under Briefcase. This review takes all that into account and provides an updated analysis of all of the tools.]

Since its inception in 2010, AppSumo has been offering entrepreneurs, freelancers, and bloggers astounding discounts on popular business products. I owe a BIG thanks to Noah Kagan and team at AppSumo for helping me secure lifetime access to a plethora of tools that have been instrumental in growing my business and blog.

Here are some of my favorite “lifetime access” deals I’ve been able to acquire over the past couple of years:

And of course, many more, but the above tools are the ones I find the most useful to my current needs.

So when AppSumo announced the launch of Briefcase, a subscription-based service that grants you access to a curated selection of top-tier software and apps for just $49/month, in fall 2017, I was more than excited to join and to try out the curated list of products.

Since then, I’ve been an active subscriber of Briefcase, paying a monthly subscription fee of $49 every month, but saving thousands of dollars as a result.

As of November 2018, there are 29 tools in Briefcase — these tools can help you optimize SEO, quickly design graphics and ebooks, manage your accounting, find sales leads, auto-generate content and so much more.

In this article, we’ll examine the various tools that are being offered under the Briefcase portfolio and help you decide whether it’s worth investing $49 a month or $500 a year on AppSumo’s Briefcase.

Before we begin, you may want to sign up for a 7-day free trial of Briefcase. This trial will give you full access to all the Briefcase tools for 7 days. Click on the button below to start your Briefcase trial.

What is Briefcase?

Briefcase is a membership-based service that grants you access to a curated selection of top-tier software for just $49/month. The curated tools are specifically chosen for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

What Tools Are Included in Briefcase?

As of November 2018, there are 29 tools in Briefcase and AppSumo adds new tools each month.

These tools fall under the following categories:

Lead Generation

SEO

Social Media Marketing

Finance

Hiring

Design

Finance

Sales

Marketing

Customer Insights

Productivity

In the next section, we’ll explore the key features of all the tools included in Briefcase. If you’re already familiar with the tools under Briefcase, you can directly jump to the following sections of the article:

Briefcase Tools: A Detailed Analysis of All the Tools

While all these tools are worthy of their own reviews, as you’d imagine, it’s not possible to contain all the pros and cons of each of them in this blog post. We are dealing 29 tools after all. Therefore, I’ll briefly describe each tool and present 3-4 best features of each tool, so you know exactly what you can expect from the tools in your Briefcase.

Briefcase: Lead Generation Tools

CallPage

CallPage puts you on the phone with potential customers in less than 28 seconds. CallPage’s widgets and CTAs engage website visitors and give them an opportunity to chat immediately with your company’s representatives.

As a result, CallPage drastically increases the number of calls you receive from website visitors.

I’ve integrated CallPage with my agency website and I get at least 30 call requests a month, many of them super relevant.

Key Features

50 calls per months on unlimited domains.

Fully customizable widget (including texts and custom colors).

Custom SMS notifications to thank customers and give them the contact info of the company representative they were just talking to.

I’m huge fan of Book Like a Boss. I’ve been using it for over 6 months now, and it’s simplified my life to a large extent and has definitely made me more organized. You can check out my page here to get a fair idea what a complete Book Like a Boss page looks like.

Key Features

Manage your business from an easy-to-use dashboard.

Integrates with Stripe and/or Paypal or get paid in cash. Sell services, digital, and physical products.

The Book Like a Boss calendar integrates with your Google, Outlook, Office 365 or iCloud calendar, so you’re never double booked.

WebSite Auditor helps your site climb the SEO charts by providing in-depth on-page analysis and optimization. It uncovers every issue that can affect search engine indexation, rankings, and user experience and gives you step-by-step instructions on how to fix those issues.

Key Features

Optimize an unlimited number of websites

Measure optimization rates for competitors’ pages

Create in-app optimization HTML reports

With Briefcase membership, you also gain unlimited access to Website Auditor training materials, plus an incredible roadmap of future updates.

Missinglettr creates strategic, automated social media campaigns that drive traffic for an entire year. Just review their pre-generated social posts and approve the ones you like. Over the next 12 months they’ll drive traffic back to your site and increase engagement.

PixelMe’s URL shortener and retargeting pixel will help you increase clickthroughs, improve ROI, and decrease ad acquisition costs. This simple piece of code helps you target and track people who click on your links.

You can also share your PixelMe URL with social influencers, allowing you to retarget their audience long after the initial promotion ends.

Key Features

5 retargeting pixels –Each pixel is reserved for one platform. So, with 5 pixels, you can use one pixel to retarget people on Facebook, one pixel to retarget people on Twitter, so on and so forth.

Create professional-looking invoices and get paid faster – Easily create a quote, attach a proposal,and send it to your client for approval.

Track your expenses automatically and have all your numbers in one place – Link your bank account or credit card, and Billy will import all your expenses automatically.

See the whole picture – Billy brings all your financials together. No more spreadsheets with expenses, Word invoices, bank statements and paper receipts all over the place. Have all your numbers in one place so you can see the whole picture of your business.

Fiskl allows you to send invoices the moment your work is done, automate time and mileage tracking, scan expenses, request deposits and manage clients all from whatever device you happen to have with you at the time. Soon, you’ll be able to accept payments from 135+ countries with Fiskl.

Nusii lets you build custom proposals using your content and their well-designed proposal templates. Once the proposal is sent, you’ll have visibility into client activity along with tracking and auto-reminders.

FollowUp – an intelligent, simple Personal CRM – helps you continue to connect effortlessly. It’s built to live inside Gmail so you can stay on top of your network as you communicate in real time. It’s incredibly intuitive, and most importantly, sustainable.

Key Features

Notifications and reminders to follow up with contacts

Search conversations, the last time you spoke, and their contact information

Schedule events directly from Gmail.

Retail Price: $358/year

Other Briefcase Benefits

In addition to all the aforementioned tools, here are some other benefits of an active Briefcase membership:

Is it Worth Paying $49/month for Briefcase?

In the end, it all boils down to one key question: Is it worth paying $49 a month for Briefcase?

The short answer is yes.

If you were to subscribe to each of these tools, majority of which follow a subscription-based model, you’d easily be paying over thousand dollars a month.

In the end, it’s all about saving cost and getting the maximum efficiency out of some of the best business tools available in the market.

Even if you were to use just 10 of these tools (like I do) in a given month, you’d still be saving up a considerable amount of money.

There are currently 29 tools in Briefcase. To be frank, I use only 10 of them on a regular basis: Brain.fm, Promo Republic, CloudApp, pCloud, Grum, Planable, WebTextTool, Poplink, Rocketium, and FindThatLead.

I’d like to use the rest of the tools more, but I just don’t have the time or bandwidth right now. But it’s nice to know I can access them anytime I want.

If you think you’re at risk of losing some of the unused tools by the end of the month, AppSumo has a solution for that. You just need to activate the tool from the Briefcase dashboard before the month ends.

That way you’ll make sure you always have access to the tool even if Briefcase discontinues the tool in the future.

Final Thoughts

I’ve tried to describe the features and benefits of all the tools currently offered by AppSumo in Briefcase. But the best way to evaluate these tools would be to sign up for a free trial. Currently, AppSumo is offering a free 7-day trial of the platform, where you can unlock some of the tools and test out the features. Click here to sign up for a free trial.

Each tool in Briefcase has been carefully selected and vetted by the AppSumo team. Rather than spending $25-50/month on one tool, you can pay $49/month through Briefcase and enjoy lifetime access to some of the best and most unique business tools on the market.

Each tool in Briefcase has been carefully selected and vetted by the AppSumo team. Rather than spending $25-50/month on one tool, you can pay $49/month through Briefcase and enjoy lifetime access to some of the best and most unique business tools on the market.

Sandeep Mallya is the Founder/CEO of Startup Cafe, a Bangalore-based digital marketing agency. He is an active member of the startup community, having worked with several early-stage startups and accelerators. 99signals is Sandeep's inbound marketing blog. Here you can find tips and insights to grow your site's traffic.

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About Me

Hi there, I’m Sandeep Mallya!

I’m an entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant from Bangalore, India. I founded my own digital agency, Startup Cafe Digital, in 2015 where I help SMBs leverage social media, SEO, and content marketing to grow their traffic and generate qualified leads for their business.

I started 99signals in 2016 as a side project to document all the strategies, tools, and tactics that I was using to grow my small agency. The goal was simple: to arm other solopreneurs with all the right information they needed to launch a successful business.

ABOUT ME

Hi there, I’m Sandeep Mallya!

I’m an entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant from Bangalore, India. I founded my own digital agency, Startup Cafe Digital, in 2015 where I help SMBs leverage social media, SEO, and content marketing to grow their traffic and generate qualified leads for their business.

I started 99signals in 2016 as a side project to document all the strategies, tools, and tactics that I was using to grow my small agency. The goal was simple: to arm other solopreneurs with all the right information they needed to launch a successful business.

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ABOUT US

99signals is a marketing blog run by me, Sandeep Mallya, to help bloggers and entrepreneurs run a successful side business and earn extra income through blogging and affiliate marketing.